Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849
TekstA shooting-coat, made either of cloth or velveteen, differing in colour, perhaps, for the different districts, or else one and the same throughout the whole service – black, or dark brown, or dark green, or any other colour that would suit the woodland and the moor; a waistcoat to match, with those abundant pockets that the true shooter knows how to make use of; trousers and stout boots, or else knee-breeches, leathern leggings, and high-lows; in fact, whatever shooting costume might be decided on by the gentry and authorities of the county for their respective regiments. As for hats, either a plain round hat, or else one of the soft felt ones, those most delightful friends to the heated and exhausted sportsman. The only thing would be to have everything cut after the same fashion, and the effect of uniformity would be immediately attained, without running into any of those excesses of paraphernalia which in former days brought down such deserved ridicule on the corps of loyal volunteers. Every man should wear round his waist a black leathern belt containing his bullets and leathers; his caps would be stowed away in one of his pockets; and his powder would travel well and dry in a horn or flask hung by a strap over his shoulder. His rifle – we need hardly describe it – should be rather longer and heavier than for sporting purposes, inasmuch as it may have to be used against cavalry; and it should admit of having a sword-bayonet fastened on at the muzzle. This bayonet might be worn suspended, as a sword in its sheath, from the belt round the waist. A black leathern knapsack, and a pilot-coat of warm stuff rolled up on the top of it, would complete the costume of our volunteer; and he would look more truly martial and serviceable, when thus equipped, than if decked out with all kinds of lace and trimmings, and clad in a jacket cut in the most recherché style of military tailoring.
The officers should wear a precisely similar dress, but they might be distinguished by gold or crimson sashes, according to rank, and might wear round their breast, or on their hats, some further distinguishing marks of their offices. The whole should be based on the idea of equipping the corps as plain country gentlemen and yeomen going out to do a day's serious business in the field; and if the business is not to be serious, it is better to leave it alone than to attempt it.
Regard should be paid to the various inclinations and habits of the districts from whence the regiments should be drawn, and, in particular, those from Scotland should by all means retain some strongly distinctive marks of their national costume: the plaid could never be misapplied on their brawny shoulders.
We should suppose that it would cost each member of the corps at least £10 or £15 to equip himself completely, and this would be by no means too large a sum for the purposes required.
The costume of the mounted riflemen need not differ much from that of the men on foot. The shooting-coat is as good on horseback as off; and the only alteration we would recommend would be in the use of the stout but supple black-jack hunting-boots now coming so much into fashion. These admit of exercise on foot as well as in the saddle, and being plain, quiet things, would be peculiarly suitable for the purpose intended.
8thly, We are firmly persuaded that, if this experiment were tried in any one county or district, it would be found to answer so well that others would adopt and imitate it. The service it would render to government might be most important in stirring times; and being a bonâ fide and really effective corps, it would revive the martial and manly feelings of the people, now somewhat blunted by the long duration of peace, and would diffuse a most wholesome spirit throughout the land. From the sentiments of honour, and loyalty too, with which such a corps would be animated, (for it would be composed of the very flower and hope of the land,) it would, by its moral weight alone, keep in check that crowd of discontented persons who always exist in our empire. The loyal and honourable sentiments possessed by this corps would spread themselves abroad among the people; the good example set would be followed by the most respectable part of the nation, and a healthier tone would be thereby given to society in general.
9thly, Taking into consideration the number of parishes, and the population of Great Britain, (for we could not admit the Irish into our loyal ranks) we should estimate the probable force that could thus be raised and maintained at its own expense, at not less than 50,000 men, of whom 10,000 would be effective light cavalry; and we should suppose that at least 40,000 of this total number might be counted on for active service, in any emergency.
The mere fact, if this calculation be not overrated, of our being thereby able to add such a degree of strength to our regular army – or that of our being able to replace such a number of our regular troops, if called abroad suddenly for distant duty – or else, the knowledge that there would always be such a numerous body of men in the country, armed and arrayed in the support of the monarchy and the constitution; either of these facts, taken separately, might justify the formation of such a corps, but, taken conjointly, they seem to carry with them no small weight.
An anomaly in the present constitution of noble society which requires remedying, is the frequent inadequacy of the territorial means possessed by noble families for the maintenance of their power and dignity. This has reached to such a pitch, of late days, that we have seen the ladies of two peers of the realm claiming public support in formâ pauperum; and we have witnessed the breaking-up and sale of such a princely establishment as that of Stowe. Many noble families are forced to depend on public offices, and other indirect sources, for the support of their members. Many noble families of high distinction and renown are poorer than ordinary commoners. There are very few estates of nobles (we say nothing of those of commoners) which are not oppressed by mortgages, and which, in reality, confer much less power than they nominally represent. From whatever causes these circumstances may have arisen, – whether from the folly and extravagance of the nobles themselves as a main cause, or from the imprudence of the crown in making unworthy creations, as a subsidiary cause – they have produced the most injurious effects upon the order, and have even justified the boast of the first commoner who thought himself superior to the last of the nobles. By few things has the order been more injured in public opinion than by the inequality and inadequacy of its territorial resources. This, too, becomes the more painfully evident in a nation where commerce has been allowed to assume an undue preponderance in the public mind, and where the means of gaining money are so various and so many, that the rapid acquisition of handsome fortunes is a very common occurrence. It is an evil, a negation of the ends of life, and a main cause of the decline and fall of a nation, that such a state of things should exist; but, seeing that it does exist, it is doubly the duty and the interest of all who have the honour and the permanency of national prosperity at heart, to favour the establishment and the maintenance of the strongest possible antagonistic principle – the forming and preserving of large territorial possessions in favour of the order of nobles. Believing that the law of primogeniture is the basis of all political freedom, we would urge the expediency of modifying the law, so that certain great estates, like the fiefs of old, should become inalienable by any person, unattachable for any liabilities, and indivisible under any circumstances, in favour of the order of nobles: and that the holders of such estates should be nobles, and nobles only. In the same spirit we would say, that the extent of territory should determine the rank of the noble, taking, as the starting-point, the estates as they might exist at any period of time; that to each title a certain territory should be inalienably attached, and that the title itself should derive its name from that territory – the holder of the territory, whoever he might be, always taking the title. It would be productive of great good if facilities were given as much as possible for massing together the properties of the noble; and if estates widely spread over the kingdom could be exchanged for others lying close together, and forming a compact territory. The powers of the nobles are now greatly frittered away and lost by the dispersion of their properties: he who holds nearly a whole county continuously, like the Duke of Sutherland, is of much more weight in the state than another, like the Duke of Devonshire, whose estates, though of very great value, lie more widely scattered.
It may appear an innovation, but we are persuaded that it would be only a return to the fundamental and ancient principles of the constitution, to make the possession of a real estate of a certain value, for a certain time, a legal title to claim the right to nobility. Thus the possession of an estate of £10,000 per annum clear rental, or of 5000 acres, by the same family, in direct descent for four generations, should of itself constitute a right for its owner to be ranked in the lowest order of nobility, – that of barons, – and the barony should give its name to its possessor; while, the possession of land of greater extent and value should modify the superior titles of those who held them, until the highest rank in the peerage were attained. All nobles holding not less than £100,000 per annum of clear rental, or 50,000 acres, should ipso facto and de jure become dukes, and so on in proportion between these two extremes of the peerage. Baronets should rank, in virtue of their estates, immediately after the barons; and in their turn, too, the possession of a certain income from landed property, such as £5000 a-year clear for four generations, in the same family, should immediately entitle its owner to rank among the baronets, and to have the style and privileges of that order.
It will be urged, on the other hand, that the crown would thereby be deprived of the power of rewarding meritorious public servants, by calling them up to the House of Peers, if the possession of a certain large amount of landed property were made a sine quâ non for every creation. To this it may be replied that, though the prerogatives of the crown require extension rather than contraction, yet that a sufficient power of reward would be possessed, if men of eminence in the public service, whether great commanders or distinguished lawyers, were summoned to the Upper House for their lives only, without their titles being made hereditary; and further, that other distinctions might be given which would be fully sufficient rewards in themselves without any encroachment being made on the privileges of the order of nobles. Thus, in former times, when the honour of knighthood was not so common as it has now become, a great general and a great judge considered themselves rewarded enough if knighted: they never thought of being created peers. And the fact is, that though personal nobility – the nobility acquired by the performance of great actions – is in itself of the highest value to the state, as well as to the individual, it is not sufficiently valuable to entitle the heirs of a great man to take perpetual rank among the great landed proprietors of the realm. The duties and responsibilities of nobility depend more upon the trust reposed in each member than upon that member's personal qualifications. The noble cannot be separated from his lands nor from his tenants, nor from the multifarious heavy responsibilities thereby incurred; he is the representative of a great interest in the state; he is the representative of his land, and of all connected with it; he is the representative of a great class and gathering: his duties are not merely personal; he cannot found his right to nobility upon personal merit alone. Personal qualifications can give no valid right to hereditary privileges, whereas land is perpetual —rura manebunt– and the privileges as well as the duties attached to it should be perpetual also.
It would, therefore, be another step towards constituting the aristocracy of the state on a more solid and reasonable basis, if the orders of baronets, and of knights of various descriptions, were purified of their anomalies, and rendered attainable only under rules of a more general and fixed nature than at present prevail. Both these classes of nobles – for so they may be called – require considerable purification; the former, that of baronet, should be made the intermediate class between the nobles by personal merit, or knights, and those who are nobles by their lands, the peers. As was observed before, no baronetcy should be conferred unless a real estate of a certain value could be shown to be possessed, clear of all mortgage and debt; and the retention of such an estate for a certain number of generations should establish a legal claim to the title of baronet; while the subsequent increase of the same estate, and a similar retention of it for a certain number of descents, should establish a further claim to the honour of the peerage. If the orders of knighthood were made more difficult of entry, and if they were specially reserved only for public personal services, they would rise again in public estimation, and would be suitable for all purposes of reward required by the sovereign.
At the same time, and as a consequence of this, peers and baronets should not be admitted into the orders of knighthood – they should be satisfied with their own dignities. The garter, the thistle, and the shamrock should be reserved especially for the great military and naval commanders of the realm: the bath, and perhaps one or two other new orders, should be destined for men of eminence in whatever line of life they might be able to render service to their country.
It is an opinion controverted by some, but it seems founded in reason, that the twelve judges, who are at the head of their most honourable profession, should not merely be allowed to sit on the benches of the House of Lords, but that they should have the right of voting therein, and, in fact, be summoned as peers for life upon their elevation to the bench. No order of men in the whole state would exercise power more conscientiously, and from no other source could the Upper House derive at once such an immense increase of deliberative strength in the revision and framing of the laws. The bench of spiritual lords, and the bench of legal lords, ought to form two of the purest ornaments in the bright galaxy of the peers of the realm.
We shall content ourselves for the present with indicating two other points, recognised and admitted by the constitutional forms of the government, but at present much lost sight of; and they may be considered as affecting the lowest order – the very root of the whole nobility of the land.
Members of the Lower House for counties are always called knights of the shires they represent; and so they ought to be. No person should be eligible to represent a county unless previously adorned with the honour either of knighthood or of the baronetage, or unless the younger son of a peer of the realm; and indeed the attaching of titles of nobility to the possession of estates of a certain value and fixity of tenure, and the annexing of baronetcies to similar properties, would put all the principal country gentlemen in a position suited to the duties of a knight of the shire. We should not then see the absurd and mischievous anomaly of an ambitious theorist of no landed property in his own possession, but backed by the democrats of a manufacturing district, thrust upon the legislature as the representative of a large agricultural county. We should rather find the knights of the shires forming a compact and most influential body in the imperial parliament, the real representatives of the interests of their constituents, and the main conservative element in the Lower House of the legislature.
The bearing of arms, and the gratuitous assumption of the title of esquire, now so universally adopted, require to be more strictly limited, unless it is desired that the whole system should fall from inevitable ridicule into ultimate disuse. It is a kind of morbid feeling that has thus been produced by national vanity, and will some day or other work out its opposite extreme, unless restrained in due time. For the undue granting of arms the Herald's College is greatly responsible; but for the universal assumption of the correlative title, society at large is to be blamed. It is one of the weaknesses of the day, that men and things are no longer called by their true names, and it indicates a downward progress in the national fortunes rather than the contrary. The evil might be checked by the confining of the right to wear coats of arms or shields to the orders of knighthood only – as it used to be at the first institution of the custom; while for all persons under that standing in society, some distinctive badge or family token might be adopted, sufficient to identify their lineage, yet showing a difference of grade. It is more difficult to say how the appellations of the various classes of commoners shall be settled; but there can be no doubt that the common herding of all men together – whether under the names of esquires, gentlemen, or even of "gents" – is an absurdity: mischievous, inasmuch as it tends to level what ought to be unequal, and as it renders ridiculous what ought to be respected.
We readily allow that the ideas propounded above are more or less Utopian; so, however, are all ideas of change. With this excuse, however, we content ourselves for the present. If we have advocated any amendments, they are not in the direction of what is called, falsely enough —Progress, but in that of what is really and truly improvement, because it implies a reverting to the fundamental and unalterable basis of the modern European social system. "Progress" now means advancement in the cause of democracy – that is, in the path which marks the decline and fall, and ultimate destruction of any old nation. Far be it from us to lend a hand to aught that can assist this fatal and destructive process. We would preserve, and restore, and improve, rather than destroy. And it is because we believe this ancient spirit of feudalism to be that which contains the great elements of national prosperity, that we therefore advocate a return towards some of its first principles. A further development of this we reserve for a future occasion. But this we will maintain, that in the great cycle of years which constitute the life of a people, the upward rising of the nation is characterised by the active vitality of what we will call feudalism, its downward sinking by the existence of democratic license and opulent enervation, following upon the decline of warlike and chivalrous pursuits. The process of corruption and of disintegration may be slow, but it is not the less certain. It overtakes even the most prosperous nations at last. Would that we could check and avert that evil from our own country!
CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS
Strange though it sound to speak of a revolution in these provinces, where the representative of the crown is notoriously supported by a large majority in the provincial parliament, and where, for years past, there has scarcely been an inquiry made as to when a regiment either came or went, or even how many troops were in the whole American colonies; yet it is nevertheless a fact, that a more important and effective revolution is now going on in the Canadas, than if half their population were in open arms against the mother country.
Before attempting either to describe or to account – which we trust in the course of this paper to be able to do – for this extraordinary state of things, it will be necessary to touch upon a few leading events in the history of both provinces, and, incidentally, upon the character and intentions of the parties engaged in them.
It is well known to all English readers, that the French of Lower Canada, forming a population of some four hundred thousand people, after a long course of factious and embarrassing legislation; after a species of civil, social, and parliamentary strife for nearly half a century, which was far more withering in its effects upon the prosperity of the country than a good fight in the beginning would have been, finally, in 1837, took up arms against the British government. Shortly afterwards they were joined by the party in Upper Canada which had long made common cause with them, though without common principles, aims, or hopes – the one's pride being indissolubly wedded to institutions which were pregnant with retrogression and decay, the other's chief merit consisting in pretension to raise men from beneath old ruins, instead of bringing old ruins down upon them. Yet both agreed in hating England, and in taking up arms, jointly and severally, to overthrow her institutions. Whatever other lesson England might have learned from the fact, she should at least have learned this – that it was no ordinary feelings of desperation or of difference that made them forego so much to each other, in order to strike an effectual blow at her; and that it could be no ordinary circumstance, if it was even in the nature of things, after they had become partners in the same defeats and humiliations – after they had been made bed-fellows by the same misfortunes – that could disunite them in favour of their common enemy; and not only turn the tide of their hatred against each other, but make the party that became loyal to England kiss the rod that had so severely scourged it.
Probably this might have been thought difficult. But where the hostility to England might have been regarded as accidental, rather than of settled and determined principle, it might be urged that the reconciling one or both these parties to the British government, might not have been impossible; or the bringing the one back to loyalty, even at the expense of its having to oppose the other, might still be in the power of wise legislation.
This brings us to consider the character and the principles, the prejudices and the predilections, of the two parties. And if the reader will follow us over a little scrap of history, possibly new to him, if we do not happen to differ on the road, we apprehend we shall agree in summing up the general results.
For many parliaments previous to the rebellion in Lower Canada, the majority in favour of the French was on an average equal to four-fifths of each house. And, instead of this majority being diminished by the agency of immigration, or by reason of the detachment of almost every Englishman and American in the province from their cause – who at first sided with them for the purpose of procuring the redress of all real abuses, most, if not all, of which, arose from the nature of their own institutions, – it continued to increase, until at last every county in the province which had a preponderance of French influence, sent a member to parliament to carry on a kind of civil war with the government. Men of the first talents in the country, who had freely spent the best of their lives and their efforts in its service, when they were compelled to leave this faction, or take leave of their loyalty to the crown, found that the breadth of their own intellects was all they were ever able to detach from its ranks. Every concession the imperial government could make, every effort to conciliate them, was met only by fresh demands – demands conceived in a spirit of hostility, and wilfully and knowingly of such a character as could not be conceded. Yet their majorities continued, and even increased, in parliament. In 1832, they carried their measures of hostility to the British, and even the Irish population so far, as to refuse to employ them for any purposes whatever, and, in some cases, those employed were dismissed. It is matter of Lower Canadian history, that one of their greatest grievances was, that they had not the control of the appointments of judges and other public officers, and the apportioning of their salaries; yet it is well known – it was publicly avowed by them in Parliament – that their object was, to starve out the British government, by starving out its officers. Still the French leaders who mooted these measures gained in popularity, and the English members for French counties continued to lessen. British manufactures were solemnly denounced in their parliament, and the use of them declared a disgrace to every Frenchman; and a tax, which they intended as a prohibition, was attempted to be placed upon British emigrants: yet withal, Mr Papineau, the great French leader, rose the higher, and his party grew the stronger. The more, in short, the French leaders could embarrass the government, and the more they could throw obstacles in the way of the improvements incident to the activity and enterprise of the English race, the more they rose in the estimation of the French constituencies. They claimed, in truth, for these very acts, their confidence, and they received what they claimed to the fullest extent. In a well-written, and, considering all the circumstances, a temperate address of the Constitutional Association of Montreal in 1832 – an association got up with the view of making the situation of the British population known to the imperial government, and an association that afterwards greatly contributed to save the province during the rebellion – we find the following among other passages to the same effect, upon this subject: —
"For half a century has the population of English and Irish descent in Lower Canada been subjected to the domination of a party whose policy has been to retain the distinguishing attributes of a foreign race, and to crush in others that spirit of enterprise which they are unable or unwilling to emulate. During this period, a population, descended from the same stock with ourselves, have covered a continent with the monuments of their agricultural industry. Upper Canada and the United States bear ample testimony of the flood-tide of prosperity – the result of unrestricted enterprise, and of equitable laws. Lower Canada, where another race predominates, presents a solitary exception to this march of improvement. There, surrounded by forests inviting industry, and offering a rich reward to labour, an illiterate people, opposed to improvements, have compressed their growing numbers almost within the boundaries of their original settlements, and present, in their mode of laws, in their mode of agriculture, and peculiar customs, a not unfaithful picture of France in the seventeenth century. There also may be witnessed the humiliating spectacle of a rural population not unfrequently necessitated to implore eleemosynary relief from the legislature of the country."
But it is no new lesson to learn, that an inert and unprogressive race, with pride clinging to decay, and customs withering to enterprise, cannot harmonise, in legislative provisions, with men who want laws to assist the steps of advancing civilisation, rather than ways and means of keeping up old ruins; who prefer to gather the fruits of a thousand trees, for the planting of which enterprise has explored, and industry has employed, new and rich domains, to tying up the decaying branches of a few old ones, to which possibly memory may love to cling, but under which plain human nature might starve. To expect, in fact, that men with such opposite characteristics, apart even from their other elements of discord, should harmonise, when the party weaker in legislation was the stronger in civilisation, when the party that stood still had the power of making the other stand still also, was to expect an impossibility. And this was exactly the nature of the contest so long carried on in Lower Canada. An ox and a race-horse had been yoked together in the same legislative harness. But the misfortune was increased by the race-horse's being subject – however much he might struggle, and rear, and foam – to the motions of his dogged companion, and to the necessity of not moving at all, whenever it pleased his venerable mate to stand still. It is clear, therefore, that any legislative provision, after the rebellion, which would restore to the French this ascendency, would be but causing confusion worse confused – would be but entailing upon both parties constant contentions, with the probability, if not the certainty, of a final appeal to arms; in which case England would be left without a friend in either party – the one looking upon her as their natural enemy – the other as a power which had always sacrificed its friends when it had the means of benefiting them – had perpetually raised its defenders very high, to see how very far it could let them fall.
The party in Upper Canada which had opposed the government step by step, until it ended with rebellion in conjunction with the French, was composed of vastly different materials from these its allies. And it is somewhat singular, but it is nevertheless a fact, that this party, both as to its strength, and the true causes of its hostility to England, has never been very thoroughly understood even in the Canadas. The principle of under-rating enemies was always applied to it by its opponents in the province. The pernicious habit of looking upon men with too much contempt to take the measure of their strength, is as bad in politics as it is in a physical struggle. But the party known as the government party in Upper Canada, was generally far too self-important and too great to calculate how many dark-looking clouds it takes to make a storm. The government of England too, never very clear-sighted in colonial affairs, and with its Argus eye as directed to Canadian prospects always suffering from some defect of vision, or looking through very distorting media, was not very likely to catch the height and cut of each individual in a colonial multitude, which it scarcely ever saw even in gross; while the Governors who "did the monarch" in the province, did not generally betray much taste for sitting down by the farmer's fireside, and eating apple-sauce and sauerkraut at his table, where there neither was, nor could have been, recognised a distinction between the master and the man, – between the lord of the castle and the cook in the kitchen. Yet such were the places where governors and rulers might have seen at work the elements of democracy; might have witnessed the process of education to the levelling system. An education which, with the vast facilities for independence in America, irrespective of situation or institutions – men never get over; and in which they might have traced the natural growth of feelings and principles, that must, in the very nature of things, be in a state of continual warfare with the customs, the pride, and the love of distinction, which are the inalienable offspring of the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the social system of England. Yet here they never penetrated either to count the voters or the children. They felt – they were obliged to feel – that the great wheel of the government, which was the majority in parliament, often performed extraordinary revolutions the wrong way. But they knew not how or wherefore. They never went where they might have studied, and could have understood, the difficulty; where, to make a long story short, in order to get at what they missed, and to understand what they did not, the reader has possibly anticipated the necessity of accompanying us.